LOBOTOMY EXPERIMENTATION TO CURE THE "MENTALLY ILL"

 The piece of equipment shown being inserted into an unknown person’s skull is known as an orbitoclast, and was utilized from the 1930s to the 1970s in an attempt to cure or alleviate the severity of a variety of mental illnesses in the United States. During this time, patient consent was often not a concern, and these invasive procedures would be forced upon patients to fix their illness. Researchers thought diseases were cured due to the lack of cognition after the procedure, which could inhibit the symptoms of illnesses such as schizophrenia. In actuality, the researchers were damaging the frontal lobe, which is essential for higher cognitive function, so patients soon became emotionally unstable, impaired cognitively, and often paranoid. These individuals were often unable to care for themselves after a lobotomy, but according to the researchers, they were “cured because they no longer experienced symptoms of their previous illness.” 

Discussion of the formidable acts of physicians/surgeons that utilized lobotomy to cure emotional issues such as depression were widely expanded on to identify ethical principles from this experimentation. It was stated that those who had undergone a lobotomy were described as being subjected to a “surgically induced childhood”, as the results of this procedure caused individuals to become mentally impaired, incontinent, as well as unable to perform simple tasks. After several months post lobotomy, many individuals were not able to dress themselves, bathe, or even eat properly. It was stressed after the lobotomy that these patients were not likely to improve their cognition and were stuck in this child-like behavior for the remainder of their life.

         Researchers would use sharp medical tool, known as an orbitoclast, and insert them underneath the base of the eyelid and continue pushing until reaching areas of the frontal cortex of the brain. Once reaching these areas, the sharp instruments would pierce the brain and slowly cause deterioration and, according to researchers, would cure individuals of the illness.   

Identification of the patient’s and patients’ family’s perspective of how trans orbital lobotomy really impacted their health is necessary as it gives a broader impact of this experimentation. As physicians claimed that this procedure cured mental illness, specifically depression, individuals who had depressive symptoms looked for these physicians to perform the prefrontal lobotomy to cure them as they were frightened by the allegation of being mentally ill.

Patients and their families trusted physicians to alleviate them from their suffering. The main interpretation that these families had was the lack of visible suffering and thus was relieved from the mental illness. The main depressive symptom, in the eyes of the patients and their families, was gone and the individuals were no longer suffering. However, the patients now had impaired cognitive abilities but the families simply thought that the patients were no longer suffering. The difficulties that families faced placed a lot of stress on them, as they now had to bathe, feed, and dress these patients post lobotomy.

​